Modern Day Treasure Hunts: Geocaching

Clay and Owen Wright find a hidden cache.

From the minute my husband described Geocaching to my two boys and me, we were hooked. In essence, Geocaching is a high-tech way to go on a treasure hunt – anywhere, anytime.

After punching in our home address on the official Geocaching website (www.geocaching.com), my husband quickly found several caches within a one mile radius of our home. Armed with a portable GPS, print outs of our destinations, which consisted of the GPS coordinates and cryptic descriptions of what we were to search for, we jumped on our bikes, donned our helmets and set off in search of who knows what.

Our first cache location took us to a nearby utility box with small sewer pipes. Nearly 20 minutes later, we located the small pea size cache. You would have thought my boys had won the lottery as we carefully unscrewed the top, unrolled the very small piece of paper and saw the names of all the other Geocachers who had found the cache before us. We found a pencil (good thing my husband boarders on being a pack rat), debated upon our team name, signed the log and carefully put it back into place before anybody saw us.

Bike rides are more fun when you are in search of a hidden cache.

There’s a whole world, literally, of Geocachers out there. Those who participate in this game are very careful to keep cache locations a secret. What fun would it be to reveal cache locations? It would be like telling somebody the ending to a movie. Caches come in all different sizes. Some only contain logs for you to sign while others ask you to leave a small trinket in exchange for one that’s in the cache. Caches can be found literally all over the world, including the ocean for those who scuba dive! There are even ‘traveling’ caches which require you to take and hide the cache in a different location than where you first found it.

Anybody can hide a cache and post it on the website but if you do, you are responsible to maintain and manage your cache, making sure it is findable and in good condition. Those who find the caches typically post replies and comments back onto the website. It’s funny to see what others had to go through to find the caches.

Our Geocaching adventures have evolved since that first adventure. I have downloaded a Geocaching application onto my iPhone, which allows me to search for caches on the fly and since I’m typically not carrying a portable GPS in my back pocket, it serves that function also. My boys collect ‘trinkets’ to leave behind and we now take small snacks since we’re venturing farther and farther away from our house. What hasn’t changed is that we’re getting exercise, spending quality time together while working as a family all in the name of FUN!